Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1

This does not work as a stand alone film. I'll just say that outright. This film is chocked full of technical problems, pacing issues, plotting flaws, bad dialogue and inconsequential HOURS of footage. At times, I found myself laughing out loud, unable to control myself. At times, it's just that bad.

But people seem to be forgiving of it just because it's Harry Potter. Ooooh, this is deep, I haven't seen a quidditch game in this one so it must be a mature, intelligent social commentary... no. When I say the plot is bad, things just happen for the sake of it. I won't go in to too much explicit detail otherwise I'll ruin it (unlikely) for you. There is no thread of logic between the events. A lot of the time, they're wandering about camping, saying 'what are we supposed to be doing now?', 'I don't know, check the script', 'it's blank', 'oh shit'. And when they do actually formulate some kind of plan, it obviously works despite not having any real bearing on events that came before, or things just happen out of sheer luck. These occurrences start doubling up on each other by the time Harry visits his parents grave. It's just bad writing.

I will say that the first hour is actually fine, but it goes down hill at such a rapid decline it was jarring as a viewer. The soon to be infamous 'dance' scene was a complete misfire, it had the cinema audience laughing at just how awkward it was. A bad choice to even put it in, I'd say. Rupert Grint totally outmatches Daniel Radcliffe in their heated exchanges, Radcliffe looks incapable of showing an emotion period, but the dialogue between Hermione and Harry when they are alone is mind numbingly poor. The best bit of the film is actually when the holy trinity are not actually on screen for about fifteen minutes, and when Ron provides some much needed comic relief.

The finale is fine, if a little too convenient, like everything else. It would be nice to see Harry use wits, cunning and bravery to solve his problems rather than moping around and getting really lucky. In all, the second hour should have been reduced to a montage of camping, that would have been fine. Look at Lord of the Rings, we didn't literally see Sam and Frodo stop and camp every single night, did we? Only when it was important to the plot. I predict that watching this will make Part II seem bearable. I just want this to end now. I do think Part II will be a hell of a lot stronger, just because things are bound to actually occur, unlike in this dull mess. In fact, it will be interesting to see if this film was needed AT ALL.

And who cares about Dobby, for God's sake? Wasn't he in it four films ago?

4/10